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Launching and Scaling an Account Based Marketing Strategy: Implementing the Right Way
This document discusses launching and scaling an account-based marketing strategy. It recommends starting with a small pilot that engages one sales partner and focuses on a small target account list. The pilot should customize touchpoints like digital ads, landing pages, and emails for each account and measure the impact on key metrics. To scale the strategy, the document suggests expanding the target account list and sales partnerships, building an ABM leadership team, and optimizing budgets and technologies to support the strategy. Customizing engagement by account tier and stage is also recommended based on account value, effort invested, and strategic initiatives.
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Launching and Scaling an Account Based Marketing Strategy: Implementing the Right Way
- 1. Launching & Scalingan Account Based Marketing Strategy Implementing the Right Way
- 2. ABOUT THE SPEAKERS NolinLeChasseur CMO & Partner, Brainrider Jessica Fewless VP ABM Strategy & Field Marketing, Demandbase Heidi Vandermeer Account Based Marketing Manager, Uberflip
- 3.
- 4. THE OLD MODELDISCONNECTED MARKETING & SALES
- 5.
- 6. SALES OBJECTIVE CLOSED-WONOPPORTUNITIES
- 7. THE NEW MODELTHE REVENUE PIPELINE
- 8. PIPELINE OBJECTIVE CLOSED-WONOPPTYS IN ACCOUNTS
- 9. THE IMPACT OFABM ABM LIFT ON SEVERAL METRICS 3.98 4.00 4.02 4.14 4.20 4.31 4.64 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 Customer Retention Rate Initial Contract Value Close Rate Return on Sales & Mktng. Investment Upsell/Cross-sell Overall LTV Alignment Between Sales & Marketing ABM OUTPERFORMS TRADITIONAL METHODS B2B Marketers Are Realizing Greater Benefits From ABM Across Multiple Areas TOPO: ABM State of the Market ABM provides much greater benefit than traditional approach ABM and traditional are same Traditional approach benefit is much greater
- 10. 3.89 3.81 4.12 4.15 3.70 4.23 4.44 4.17 4.18 4.30 4.32 4.38 4.39 4.87 1 1.5 22.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 Customer Retention Rate Initial Contract Value Close Rate Return on Sales & Mktg. Investment Upsell/Cross-sell Overall LTV Alignment Between Sales & Marketing 1 yr+ <1yr THE IMPACT OF ABM ABM LIFT INCREASES OVER TIME TOPO: ABM State of the Market ABM provides much greater benefit than traditional approach ABM and traditional are same Traditional approach benefit is much greater ABM BENEFITS INCREASE OVER TIME The Benefits Of ABM vs. Traditional Marketing are More Pronounced as you Scale Your Efforts
- 11. ABM PILOT ADOPTIONPATH SCALEEXPANDPILOT Partner with a group of Sales Reps Expand target account list ABM strategy to target accounts & segments Partner with one Sales Rep Small target account list ABM strategy to target accounts Sales and Marketing Partnership Comprehensive target account list Full ABM rollout across Sales and Marketing
- 12. ABM PILOT PLAN3 STEPS TO A SUCCESSFUL PILOT STEP 3 Measure impact and identify improvements. • Account goals • Influenced pipeline • Campaign lift • How to expand STEP 2 Customize touch points for each account. • Digital ads • LPs, Forms, Emails • Content assets • Website content STEP 1 Engage sales partner to formulate plan. • 90 days • 1 account exec • 5-10 accounts • 2-3 key metrics
- 13. TIER CUSTOMIZE BY Account# of Employees Annual Revenue Vertical/Industry/SIC Geography Buying group Need/Pain/Challenge Timing Budget (Intent) Individual Buying group role Department/function Device Priority vs. other work ADOPTING ABM TARGETING & CUSTOMIZATION TIERS
- 14. ABM PILOT HOWTO CUSTOMIZE DIGITAL ADVERTISING • Targeting parameters • Ad creative • Offers • CTAs WEBSITE CONTENT • Headings • Navigation • Images • Conversion points LANDING PAGES, FORMS & EMAILS • Custom copy & Images • Lookalike customer logos or testimonials for social proof • Custom CTA language CONTENT ASSETS • Titles • Cover pages • Background images • Jargon TARGET ACCOUNT LIST
- 15. SCALING YOUR ABMSTRATEGY
- 16. © 2017 DEMANDBASE｜SLIDE16 ARE YOU READY FOR SCALE? Do you have a successful model or pilot? YES NO Why Not? Refine & try again Scaling Check List Scaling Playbook
- 17. © 2017 DEMANDBASE｜SLIDE17 ABM IS A COMPREHENSIVE DEMAND GEN STRATEGY Select your approaches to match: Revenue Goals Business Objectives Strategic Initiatives Business Model Budget Optimization 1:1 1:Few 1:Many Each tier provides different value to the business
- 18. © 2017 DEMANDBASE｜SLIDE18 WHERE TO SCALE? TAM: All companies that could buy from you TARGET MARKET: Accounts that are suitable clients – meet your ICP TARGET ACCOUNT LIST: Our focus of XXXX accounts – XX accounts per sales rep, and those showing buying intent AE TOP ACCTS: Top XX% of the Target Account List that is the primary focus for Sales & Marketing OPPORTUNITY: Any account that is engaged in a Sales Cycle – MQL+ TAM Target Market Target Accts AE Top Accts Opportunity/ Customers
- 19. © 2017 DEMANDBASE｜SLIDE19 ABM IS A TEAM SPORT! Marketing OperationsSales Senior leaders in… Build Your ABM Leadership Team
- 20. © 2017 DEMANDBASE｜SLIDE20 WHAT KIND OF ORGANIZATION WILL YOU BUILD? CentralizedDecentralized Hub and Spoke Honeycomb Additional skills and knowledge: • Customer and market intelligence • Sales collaboration • Data, insights, and analysis • Customer success
- 21. © 2017 DEMANDBASE｜SLIDE21 PUT THE TARGET ACCOUNT LIST TO WORK Can we sponsor just the events that attract our target accounts AND will give us a speaking slot? Fewer events; greater ROI Can we personalize our website to deliver relevant content and keep target accounts on our site longer? Optimize for the 15% TARGET ACCOUNT LIST EVENTS DIGITAL CAMPAIGNS How can we engage customers and speed the pathway to upsell and renewal? Expand customer relationships CUSTOMER MARKETING FIELD MARKETING Which regions contain the highest concentration of target accounts? Set the strategy; don’t be reactive
- 22. © 2017 DEMANDBASE｜SLIDE22 WHAT PLAYS DO YOU MAKE FOR YOUR ROLLOUT? TAM: $ Tactics: National tradeshows, webinars, videos, infographics and ebooks TARGET MARKET: $ Tactics: TAM tactics + nurture campaigns, segment personalization, Corporate Event TARGET ACCOUNT LIST: $$ Tactics: TARGET tactics + Contact Acquisition + Advertising, Discounts to events AE TOP ACCTS: $$$ Tactics: TARGET ACCOUNT tactics + Direct Mail, Field Activities like VIP Dinners, High Value/High Touch offers OPPORTUNITY: $$$$ Tactics: AE TOP ACCT tactics + First priority for field programs, FREE offers for events, 1-off DM $ = Spend per account. Shown for scale, not precision TAM Target Market Target Accounts AE Top Accts Opportunity/ Customer
- 23. © 2017 DEMANDBASE# 23 WHERE TO GET OR OPTIMIZE BUDGET? FIELD MARKETING Hospitality Events WEBSITE CRM MAS/MAP DMPs Analytics Predictive TECHNOLOGY / INFRASTRUCTURE DEMAND GEN Sponsorships: Events Sponsorships: Content Digital Events: Webinars Advertising SEM Content Syndication/ 3rd party Networks Paid Social Direct Mail CONTENT MARKETING PRODUCT MARKETING PR/ANALYST AGENCY FEES Testing Design Paid Social SEM
- 24. © 2016 DEMANDBASE# 24 HOW WILL YOUR BUDGET SHIFT? $222K / year for New ABM Programs & ABM Technologies $465k FULL BUDGET CONTENT SYNDICATION WEBINAR SPONSORSHIPS DIGITAL ADVERTISING REGIONAL EVENTS SAVING BY ABM APPROACH $243k FULL BUDGET Standard B2B Marketing Spend ABM Optimized Spend
- 25. © 2017 DEMANDBASE｜SLIDE25 Enabling Leadership Team Enabling Marketing Enabling Sales Enabling Operations SCALING ABM: PLAYBOOK
- 26. © 2017 DEMANDBASE｜SLIDE26 You cannot buy your way into an ABM strategy ABM + TECHNOLOGY
- 27. © 2017 DEMANDBASE｜SLIDE27 TECHNOLOGY CAN HELP Infrastructure: how do you track and execute your ABM strategy? Account Selection: how do you get the RIGHT list in place? Engagement: how do you get a relevant message to your targets? Sales Enablement: Marketing’s done their job, how do you make sure Sales gets it over the finish line? Measurement: How do you know what’s working? What’s not? What’s next?
- 28. Launching ABM at 2.Customized touch points for accounts. 3. Measured and improved1. Engaged sales to formulate plan.
- 29. Launching ABM at 2.Customized touch points for accounts. 3. Measured and improved Plot twist: Hired the salesperson for ABM! 1. Engaged sales to formulate plan.
- 30. Personalization and relevance arekey to ABM
- 31. Source: Marketo “TheState Of Engagement” Report
- 32. “Leads nurtured withpersonalized content tend to lead to 20% more sales opportunities” - Demand Gen report
- 33. Optimizing Content forABM Micro Optimize the individual piece of content for your goals Macro Optimize overall experience (where does your content live?)
- 34. Content Audit Audit Existing Content TwoAngles: Audit Content Experience 1 2
- 35. Audit Existing Content1 •We had 1000s of content assets • Identified content based on industry, persona, role, account, stage, and individuals • Low-hanging fruit: Case studies, customer stories, eBooks • We launched an initial ABM campaign using existing content, and adding customization
- 36. • Where doesyour content live? • Can you organize it to be more easily found by industry, persona, role, account, stage, and individual? • Low-hanging fruit: Re-organize existing content to be more relevant & engaging to account segments 2 Audit Content Experience
- 37. Your Content Top ofthe Funnel Middle of the Funnel Bottom of the Funnel By Topic By Type By Vertical By Persona By Account
- 40. lead generation Optimize fortargeted
- 41. Based on Tier •Used different account segments (& stage) to determine investment level of time, money, and resources • E.g. at Uberflip: o Tier 1: By account, individual o Tier 2: By industry, persona, tech o Tier 3: Regular inbound strategy, + industry/persona related content Account Value ($) Effortinvested Tier: 3 2 1
- 42. STAGE Tier 1Tier 2 Tier 3 Cold - Direct mail offers, to 1-5 people 2x per quarter for each account - Targeted ads per account - Custom digital assets - Account plans - Regular inbound - Additional marketing targeting, ads for accounts with MAP - Regular inbound strategy only Engaged - Targeted ads per account - Direct mail plays - Limited direct mail plays (dependant on persona & situation) - Sales-lead Opportunity - Targeted ads per account - Creative direct mail if prospects are “going cold” - Custom digital assets - Targeted ads per account (only if at validation stage or higher & opp value) - Notes & cards - Limited direct mail Post-Sale - Thank you package & note - Thank you package & note - Thank you package Example: ABM Strategy Based on Tier + Stage
- 43. CAMPAIGN 1DCAMPAIGN 1ACAMPAIGN 1B CAMPAIGN 1C Outcome: CTR of 6-13% with target accounts!
- 46. Enable sales withthe right content at the right time
- 47. A technology sales professionalspends… 17h a week or 106 sales days a year developing client presentations looking for marketing collateral searching for customer information outside the organization 8h 5h 4h … wasting almost Source: EMI Industry Intelligence Report
- 48. Enable Sales withContent • Get in sync o Content & sales meetings o Sales contributions + ideas • Create collections of content that are easy to access + distribute for sales • Collect feedback from sales regularly on what’s working for all stages of buyer’s journey
- 49. Key Takeaways • Beginninga pilot • Engage sales to formulate plan • Customize touchpoints for each account • Measure impact & optimize for improvements • Scaling your ABM strategy • Identify scope, goals, metrics, & target accounts • Create marketing mix: Use tech to help • Review, iterate, and scale • Personalizing at scale • Audit existing content (micro) and its experience (macro). • Optimize demand generation with personalization • Provide sales the right content @ the right time
- 50. The recording willbe sent out soon. [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Editor's Notes
- #10 No to both of those….it’s because ABM is having a big impact on results for the companies who are practicing it. What you’re looking at here is the results of a recent TOPO research study that surveyed companies who have employed ABM and shows for several key indicators the impact of ABM vs traditional marketing methods. With a “1” showing traditional methods as best and a “5” showing ABM methods as best, the results are really high for ABM on all measures. But the story gets even better. Let’s take a look…
- #11 The other compelling finding is that the benefits associated with ABM increase over time. For those practicing ABM more than 1 year are seeing even more pronounced impact than companies who have just started ABM. So looking at those same attributes, we see across the board, that companies that have executed ABM for more than 1 year and seeing greater benefit vs. companies who have just started with ABM. It’s clear that as companies get more sophisticated, the impact of ABM on their business goes even higher. And speaking of sophistication….let’s look at a roadmap for ABM maturity and you can ask yourselves where you sit on this continuum.
- #12 It may seem daunting to do all of this. But remember that you can find ways to start that will help you prove the success of the model and, from there, you can then expand. Depending on the buy-in from leadership—whether you’re looking to align your work with a sales colleague, sales leadership, or go all the way with full organizational alignment—your efforts could sometimes feel like an uphill battle to drive change. The good news is that you can find ways to make change that can show real results even without full-company alignment. Think about building upward through the tiers of the ABM maturity model. At the first stage, you can partner with a sales person and use his or her named account list to target the ABM strategy. As you know, some organizations exist in which the marketing and sales personnel have never met their counterparts; in other organizations, Marketers may not have visibility within their departments or access to stakeholders who can help drive change. If either of these scenarios describes your situation, start at this initial stage. Set up a pilot to test an ABM strategy. Even implementing a small pilot can show the value of ABM. This data then can be used to gain buy in from leadership to implement ABM broader. Moving up the maturity model, you can partner with a specific sales leader and then focus the target account list on a segment that is managed by that sales leader. In some situations or organizations, you will find sales leadership buy in for ABM implementation without full buy in from the entire sales group. In this instance, develop an ABM strategy for specific industry segments. Focus on the industries that make up the sales leader’s key accounts. Measure success with ABM industries as compared to general marketing efforts. Here, too, it is important to measure before and after to provide a clear picture of the change for all leadership to see. Finally, at the top of the maturity spectrum is the full-company alignment that we have been describing. In this situation, a comprehensive target-account list is built, and there is full ABM rollout across the entire organization. While we will be talking about this top level state throughout today, all the same principles apply even if you are implementing at a smaller scale.
- #17 If no positive, go back and re-evaluate process to date? •Better List? •Better marketing programs? •Better sales enablement? •Better Metrics?
- #18 Match Business Objectives: New logos, Advocacy Match Revenue Goals: 80/20 rule; Upsell/Renewal Match Strategic Initiatives: New territory, New Product Match Business Model: Volume part of business vs Strategic Accounts
- #19 ICP: 10 characteristics focused on website volume, tech stack, etc.
- #20 “Philosophical Alignment” starts with the leadership around implementing ABM. Getting senior leaders on board not only helps with the rollout and building to higher tiers of ABM maturity but also provides you with a clear set of higher-level business objectives to drive toward with your target accounts. You’ll want to look at senior leaders in three areas: Sales, Marketing, and Operations. Leaders in each of these areas bring different elements to helping lay the foundation of an ABM strategy. The Sales department provides insight into the sales cycle and prospects that can help define the target accounts where marketing programs can target. The Marketing department provides insight into ways that the marketing programs can help in hitting the sales goals. And finally, the operations department will put up your guardrails by implementing and integrating the technology so you can derive insight through data that can help measure and fine tune the ABM strategy. Some potential leaders to consider include: Sales SVP of Sales/Chief Revenue Officer Heads of Field Sales Sales Development/Lead Development Sales Operations Marketing Demand Gen Field Marketing Marketing Ops
- #21 Standardized reports for sales enablement: Each program owner needs to have reports to help drive sales enablement. The format of these reports should be consistent across all marketing programs so that the sales team doesn’t get confused and miss key opportunities to engage in a sales conversation. If a report for one campaign has different parameters than a report for another campaign, it compromises the integrity of the strategy since the sales team won’t be following up on responses using the same guidelines. It may also undermine the trust you’ve built as they see delta’s in performance for different cmapaigns and start to focus on what they think is the best (but is only better b/c the reporting is better focused on priorities). Creating to dashboards for performance This gives everyone easy access to performance data with a single click. Update these dashboards based upon how you classify your strategy: by team, by campaign, by vertical, by product, by quarter, etc. The key is that marketers who will now be adopting a new way to evaluate their performance have clear guidelines and reports to do so – and there is no ambiguity for them. Like sales, keep them focused on reaching your target accounts, not on debating how to evaluate if ABM is right for them. Incentivizing on funnel metrics (MBO’s) We’ve said it before, and this goes back to the Dashboards, but marketers must be tied to the same funnel metrics that are being used to evaluate the effectiveness of the ABM strategy. Knowing how they will be compensated in an ABM world will eliminate any of the confusion and keep them focused on the performance metrics that will drive the right results. Forecasting by funnel metrics Using the results of your pilot or test, show the marketers how the ABM strategy has impacted performance and how they can approach forecasting the expected performance of their efforts. If you’ve seen dramatic performance increases in metrics like close rates, ACV & opportunity generation, share those numbers as benchmarks which can be used to model out how their performance will change after implementing an ABM strategy. New Marketing Mix (show how marketing mix will change based upon ABM focus and previous performance – what does it look like?) Show them how you’ve adjusted your marketing mix using an ABM strategy so they can think about how it may impact their current model, allowing them to plan ahead to monitor if their seeing the same indicators of change and to make educated decisions faster to help reach success faster. NEW MARKETING MIX?
- #23 Oppty: what impacts close rates What programs influence each of these buckets the most? Are they different by bucket What are the conversion metrics of each bucket? CP: 10 characteristics focused on website volume, tech stack, etc.
- #26 Planning an expansion of ABM, use playbook: Playbook: Step 1: Enabling ABM Leadership Team List Metrics Performance Increasing Step 2: Enabling marketing Shift in marketing tactics Shift in budgets Shift in team mix Step 3: Enabling Sales reporting Communications Cheer leading SDR hand-off Prioritization SDR team composition
- #31 What if your B2B content was binge-worthy? You will learn: - How to organize and present your content to engage your prospects and customers - How to get your sales team to use your content - How to recycle your existing content to scale your ABM campaigns
- #32 But in all seriousness – not all of us are selling products that fit in vending machines – we need to sell our product or service through thought leadership / content / education we need our prospects to engage and irrelevance is killing our chances at success Agile – terminus + uberflip allows us to launch targeted campaigns quickly and easily – this helps us scale our ABM efforts
- #33 What if your B2B content was binge-worthy? You will learn: - How to organize and present your content to engage your prospects and customers - How to get your sales team to use your content - How to recycle your existing content to scale your ABM campaigns
- #34 How can you optimize/organize the content you alreadyhave? Macro = house/shelf your content lives in Micro = content assets Both apply across the buyers journey
- #35 People are reading your content, yay! But let’s get them to take the next step… CTAs are one of the main conversion steps for content. step 1: you need to actually have one !
- #36 People are reading your content, yay! But let’s get them to take the next step… CTAs are one of the main conversion steps for content. step 1: you need to actually have one !
- #37 People are reading your content, yay! But let’s get them to take the next step… CTAs are one of the main conversion steps for content. step 1: you need to actually have one !
- #38 A few ways we typically see marketers organize content.. By personas, funnel stages, industry.. It doesn’t have to be so complicated to get started with content for ABM! One way to look at it is like this.. You might not need content at each stage for each account.. Work with the sales team to prioritize/grade your accounts and customize content as needed
- #42 People are reading your content, yay! But let’s get them to take the next step… CTAs are one of the main conversion steps for content. step 1: you need to actually have one !
- #44 Example of a campaign we tested out to target our IAP 1 accounts – all using existing content! All from those MA streams I showed you before, just repackaged
- #45 Who do you think this content stream is targeting? Didn’t need to make this content from scratch – ALL existing content with new ‘house’ + CTA
- #46 Who do you think this content stream is targeting? Didn’t need to make this content from scratch – ALL existing content with new ‘house’ + CTA
- #48 A 2011 EMI Industry Intelligence Report revealed that in an average week, a technology sales professional spends eight hours developing client presentations, five hours looking for marketing collateral, and four hours searching for customer information outside the organization. The sales professional wastes 17 hours a week or 106 sales days a year — the problem is that this dramatically reduces the effectiveness of the sales team. Working with sales is crucial to gaining traction with your key accounts. I’d recommend starting here if you don’t have a great foundation for bottom of funnel content/sales enablement
- #49 People are reading your content, yay! But let’s get them to take the next step… CTAs are one of the main conversion steps for content. step 1: you need to actually have one !